Ben Cousins, the former executive producer of Battlefield, has announced a new first-person shooter for iPhones and iPads called The Drowning.

The post-apocalyptic shooter features a rich story that involves mysterious oil spills turning millions of people across the world into mindless creatures.

Yet the real draw of The Drowning is its combat system and graphics, which DeNA claims will "match and often surpass those of current-gen consoles."

It's an awfully ambitious claim to make, but The Drowning looks awfully close to being able to back it up.Core gameplay

In The Drowning, players will be able to collect and craft a custom arsenal of up to 50 weapons. In order to build these, players must forage across the ruined landscape in search of the correct parts.The gameplay and presentation of The Drowning are meant to appeal to more hardcore mobile gamers, which is a new direction for both DeNA and Scattered Entertainment (ngmoco) as they have traditionally focused on more casual-friendly games like Blood Brothers.

This isn't to suggest that The Drowning will be an overly complex affair, however. Controls in the game will focus around a tap interface and will not rely on a virtual stick or d-pad to control movement. Instead, players simply tap where they want to walk and tap where they want to shoot.

Finally, true to DeNA's form, The Drowning will feature a cooperative multiplayer aspect that allows players to join forces to bring down powerful enemies.

We don't know when exactly The Drowning will come to the app store, but we're told it should arrive in "early 2013".